Hello! This is yet another guide on being a high DPS dealer as a Pathfinder/Trapper Hunter Ranger.

Trapper is all about switching. If you have the right feats, you will rarely use your at wills. Encounters will charge very fast and you will also deal more damage with them. So as you have to switch stances a lot, I would recommend you to have some practice as a Hunter to go with this build. Understanding the powers, feats, boons, etc is very important here, since that’s where our damage comes from.

RACE

We’re aiming for damage here and for that, you need Dexterity. I am a Wood Elf, but a good option is Drow, Dragonborn or Halfling, since they give +2 of Dexterity.

The secondary trait for HR is Wisdom, which gives you Crit. It’s very important too so make sure you get points there.

Here’s my ability score

Make your DEX and WIS the higher as possible. More about that later in the post.

POWERS AND ITEMS

Now, this is important. You need a good rotation if you wanna benefit from the feats you will get.

These are the powers and items that i keep on most of the time. It works for soloing and doing dungeons with lots of enemies. We will change a power for big, single guys though

Tymora’s Lucky Coin and Adorable Pocket Pet give you random beneficial stats <3. You can get them now on Auction House.

Make sure you put 4 power points in all of those powers (and Longstrider’s Shot/Gushing Wound) before the other ones. You will eventually have enough for all or almost that so don’t worry.

FEATS

This is the champagne supernova of this build. Make sure you read well what the feats say because it’s what makes trapper so awesome and different from other classes and builds.

Lets’s go one by one, shall we?

-HEROICS

Predatory Action: Makes you Daily Powers deal more damage. You will use those a lot so make sure you put some points there.

Weapon Mastery: Crit is always good.

Toughness: More HP. As a HR, you will need that.

Agile Combatant: This is where it starts. This feat makes you deal more damage after you switch stances. Yay for trapper!

Endless Assault: Makes your encounter powers deal more damage. Get all, since we use encounters A LOT.

Scoundrel Training: You deal ore damage to foas not targeting you with your at wills. Meh. I will change that soon, probably will put some more points into Predatory Action or give some to Lucky Skirmisher (more deflection).

Disciple of Dexterity: More damage from Dexterity. And we will get it high.

Deft Strikes: This is AWESOME. Makes you deal more damage with melee after dealing ranged damage and more ranged damage after dealing melee damage. Meaning: deal more damage after switching. One more reason to keep switching until your fingers start doing the “press TAB” movement even when you’re not playing, like at work and stuff. It happened to me it can happen to you, lol.

Trapper’s Cunning: Your crits can apply roots on the enemy

Forestbound: when you apply roots on an enemy you reduce your power cooldowns. See why we always use encountes? If you use the right powers with this, you’re good.

Ancient Roots: Your roots last longer

Swiftness of the Fox: Another awesome feat. Melee powers make ranged power cooldowns be reduced and vice versa.

Thorned Roots: Strong roots are upgraded to Thorned roots and they give a lot of damage per second.

Serpent’s Bite: More damage and crit chance from Aspect of the Serpent passive, which should never leave your tray.

Biting Snares: When you apply roots you have more AP gain, deal more damage and have more control duration.

ROTATION

Most of the time you will be using the powers i showed above:

Cordon of Arrows/Plant Growth

Constricting Arrow/Steel Breeze

Hindering Shot/Hindering Strike

Aspect of the Serpent

Aspect of the Pack

Rapid Shot/Rapid Strike

Hunter’s Teamwork/Careful Attack

Disruptive Shot

Forest Ghost

So here’s how i do it

I start the battle with Constricting Arrow to proc Biting Snares. Then i switch to melee, use Forest Ghost while i get near to the mobs, since the thorns from it give damage and it increses your run speed, use Steel Breeze, Careful Attack, Hindering Strike, Plant Growth, go back to ranged, get far again and apply more roots with Hindering Shot (it has 3 strikes) or Constricting Arrow again, Cordon of Arrows (has 3 shots too) and then start again.

As you go on you will notice that the cooldown of your encounter powers will be very short so pay attention to it and use it in your favor. All the melee powers here have AoE effects so it will help clearing annoying mobs and controling some too.

Your passive skills will be useful because Aspect of the Serpent does basically what Deft Strikes do and Aspect of the Pack gives you Combat Advantage, which is good if you’re in a party or have a companion active. You can also switch it to Aspect of the Lone Wolf if you need more deflection.

For big bosses like Orcus and others, I switch Hindering Strike for Longstrider’s Shot. Use it far from your target and you will give yourself and your party friends increased run speed. The melee version, Gushing Wound, which gives a bleed in a single enemy. It’s awesome to see all the damage numbers coming out of your enemy after using this. It can give tons of damage, but use only on big bosses.

BOONS

Elven Tranquility because you need to survve to deal damage. Don’t go all offensive all the time.

Again, defense is important too so put some Enraged Regrowth there.

In the end it’s all about demons.

I will put my last point into Dragon’s Thrist for some more Life Steal.

Demonic Endurance because we already have a great AP gain, we don’t need more.

I will then go for Icy Wrath, Glacial Strenght and Chill of Winter

Go for Fiery Frenzy, Fey Briars and Aberrant Power

COMPANIONS

This is my active companion. You can get the Paranoid Delusion on Auction House, they assume your appearence and use some of your powers while fighting. Good because increases the damage on rooted targets.

Wild Hunt Rider. You deal more damage.

Siege Master. More damage again.

Air Archon. More damage to foes not at full health.

Young Yeti. Chance that you or your companion deal more damage.

I might change some of those in the future. Fire Archon is good too, Con Artist gives more crit, the Erinyes of Belial gives more crit severity… but I’m good like that so far.

MOUNTS

These are the insignia bonus that I’m using. Wanderer’s Fortune is great, the other ones are great too. I got lucky that I had some of those mounts before the insignia thing even existed and those mounts ended up having a good benefit. Use the Heavy Howler +2000 crit as active mount power. Of course, there are some better mounts like the legendary ones (Tenser’s Disk for example). But I can’t afford it so for now I’m with those.

GEAR

This is the gear I use for now. I’m going for the Abolethic weapons set from River DIstrict campaign and will try to get better stuff from Storm King’s Thunder collection like some rings and also the Eye of the Giant artifact, for its stats of power and crit.

Now, a lot of people have been running with the Lostmauth set. It’s good but personaly I think the Company Duelist Cloak (you can get at your Guild Stronghold store) and the Greater Twined Rope of Dexterity are better. Why? Remember I said earlier we’d talk about the DEX bonus? Well here they are. Those two items don’t have set benefits, after all it’s not a set. But the cloak gives you 2 DEX and 2 WIS at legendary quality (which I’m aiming for) and the belt gives you +4 DEX on legendary. And DEX gives you damage, WIS gives you critical… so it’s totally worth it losing the bonus of the set. You can find the belt really cheap in Auction House (green quality).

ENCHANTMENTS

I’m going for Azures or Radiants on Offense, Dark on Defense for more Life Steal and Dragon’s Hoard on Utility to get more refining stones. On overloads I like using Greater Corrupt Lethal Enchantment or Greater Black/White Dragon Glyph.

For weapon enchantment you will want Dread (i use greater, it’s what I could afford but the higher the rank, the better), it’s the best for us trappers since they raise the crit severity of our encounters and reduce enemy defense and damage resistance.

For armor I use Lesser Soulforged. It revives you once after you die. Lesser really is more than enough.

FINISHING

On the pic on gear topic you can see my stats are low. That was because I was in Summer Festival zone, which reduces your lvl to 60. Those are my stats in solo battle, sometimes it can go more than that too.

Well I think that’s all. If you have any doubts, suggestions or if I forgot something, please feel free to comment 🙂

Pardon me for some possible grammar mistakes. English is not my first language.

The premise of this build is to stealth and stealth often. You’ll see quite a few variations of high crit TR builds, almost exclusively Master Infiltrator: Executioner. I can say I’ve tried both Saboteur and Executioner and both had similar damage output, but MI definitely hit harder (I’ll elaborate on this). I actually found Sabo […]

Get rid od the yeti, active bonus is useless now it has a 60 second cooldown, swap out the delusion for a shred companion like a sellsword or a con artist as that is a much better option for faster content completion

Also unless you have a legendary mount (dont think you do looking at how low your character actually is) then cavalry’s is useless an should be swapped out for a different bonus that you can actually make use of.

When I was leveling up, I chose the Stormwarden’s path. I was wondering If you think its worth to spend some money and change it to the Pathfinder’s. I have been dealing good damage, but when I go on PVP, sometimes I die very quickly. What do u suggest? Should I invest more in Life Steal or Deflection?